The law and the postal order

Govt depts insisting on Rs 10 PO has put RTI activists in a quandary

It is because, much against the rules, a majority of the government departments have been insisting that an application should be accompanied by a postal order (PO) of Rs 10.
But it is difficult to get a postal order of that amount, as there is a severe shortage of it.
At least, this is the situation in Bangalore city.

Post offices in the central division of the City attached to Vidhana Soudha, MS Building, High Court and also the Bangalore General Post Office (GPO), are all facing a shortage of the Rs 10 postal orders. The problem, the post offices say, has not been addressed despite alerting the head office.

When this reporter paid a visit to these post offices and sought Rs 10 postal orders, the department employees threw up their hands in helplessness.

While officers in the post offices attached to High Court, Vidhana Soudha and the GPO are giving applicants the option of purchasing two postal orders valued at Rs 5 (in place of the Rs 10 postal order), citizens aren’t even given this choice at the post office attached to MS Building.

Here, one is forced to purchase postal orders valued at Rs 20 or Rs 30, despite the availability of Rs 5 postal orders.

“We are not sure whether or not Rs 5 postal orders will be accepted under RTI,” the staff tell the applicants.

But why the crisis? There has been no stock of the Rs 10 postal orders for more than a month now. Though the indent has been sent to the head office, there is no response.
The Rs 10 postal orders sell the fastest as a large number of people purchase it to seek information under RTI, a clerical staff of a post office said. The response is uniform across the four post offices.

Chandrashekar, Assistant Director, Postal Department, says that there has been a sudden demand for Rs 10 postal orders this month. But the Information Commission maintains that there has been no flooding of applications this month.

Chandrashekar said: “Irrespective of April being the month of examination, the feedback received from post offices across the State is that the demand for Rs 10 postal orders has surged in the last 20 to 25 days. It’s not just Karnataka, the entire country is facing this problem. The orders get printed in just a handful of government printing presses. Considering the huge response the Anna Hazare movement has generated, it won’t be wrong to assume that a lot of citizens have been motivated to take the RTI route to fight corruption, resulting in shortage.”

The official said that the department was well aware of the shortage. Sufficient stock has arrived from Hyderabad and it will be distributed to all the post offices soon, he added.

But the fact is that there are rules under the RTI, as framed by the State government in 2005, that the mode of payment need not be only through a postal order. Virupakshaiah, Commissioner, Karnataka Information Commission, said: “Under Rule 4 (4), as per the government order dated October 11, 2005, the application fee is Rs 10 and the mode of payment can be in the form a cheque, postal order, cash or demand draft.”

The rules may be clear. But information officers in the State departments are demanding postal orders. When this reporter submitted an RTI application to the CID on April 8 and another application to the Home Department the same day, she was forced to pay the application fee only through postal order.